The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is the latest beloved classic to get an unofficial PC port, but it's run into trademark issues – yet somehow, the dispute isn't with Nintendo. The project was known as Dusk, but that's also the title of a beloved FPS that's got a trademark to defend. Luckily, this all has a happy ending for everybody involved.
"After talking to some cool people at New Blood Interactive," the devs behind the Twilight Princess port say in a Discord message, "we mutually agreed that to avoid any confusion between our projects going forward, we have decided to change the name of our port to Dusklight! No other changes are planned, the project will continue development as usual."
New Blood Interactive is an indie label best known for the kind of violent throwback FPS titles the world now collectively knows as "boomer shooters," and David Szymanski's Dusk is the game that established that brand. New Blood has a reputation for irreverent, community-friendly approach to publishing, but hey, it does still have to make sure there's no brand confusion over Dusk.
Which makes asking a community project to slightly change its name a pretty reasonable ask. "This also benefits the TP project by making it easier for people to search for," New Blood says in a tweet. "A win-win." Good looking out for the little guy.
New Blood also notes that Twilight Princess is Szymanski's "favorite Zelda so this whole thing has been pretty funny." While the publisher says that it "very much" owns the Dusk trademark, the devs behind the project now known as Dusklight were "super cool when we asked them about it. Their project is awesome and a crossover is not entirely out of the question…"
It's tough to imagine what kind of crossover is realistic here, since New Blood can't exactly start adding Link and Midna to its games. Maybe Dusk characters replacing Twilight Princess NPCs in Dusklight? For now, New Blood is simply offering some Dusk Switch keys to members of the Dusklight community.
But, uh… is New Blood at all concerned about offering this unofficial stamp of approval to Dusklight? After all, it has a business relationship with Nintendo, a company that's historically not been especially friendly toward these sports of fan projects. To that question, New Blood has a simple response: a shrug emoji.
